Morning

      We may sleep with someone, but our dreams are ours alone.  When we can't sleep, we toss and turn, the prisoner of our anxieties.

       Someone recently described sleep to me as their nourishment, every bit as important as food.  The organism needs to be in "shut down" mode to boot up again.  Anyone who has ever experienced a period of insomnia knows the feeling of dislocation sleep deprivation causes, as well as the relief brought by a good night's sleep.

       This morning, the day after Halloween, New York City is bathed in warm rain, the temperatures higher than average.  Unlike those sunny days that New York enjoys a good measure of, the cloudy days are moody, testing.  New Yorkers don't appreciate how good the weather is here in a city on the same latitude as Madrid.  The grey skies of Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and London (not to mention Scandinavian capitals) would make a joke of their complaints.

       It is a luxury to be able to take in the rain outside my window, coffee in hand.  What do we do when we face a rainy day and the quashing of plans to be outdoors on account of rain?  We turn on the local news for news of the weather.  As I write this, the voices emanating from my TV screen become the background music.  Going out immediately is not an option, a mental adjustment is in order.  Girding up for the wet, not letting the weather interrupt the agenda is a New York specialty.  I have walked in blizzards, cycled in rainstorms, given a party during a hurricane.  I am not unusual.  

      The consciousness I woke to still contained the memory of last night's dream: a dream of an empty room from which all the furniture had been removed.  Vivid dreams are signs I have slept well, the dreams frequently more delightful than anything reality could produce.  The memory of them evanesces quickly after rising though: perhaps it is nature's way of protecting us from an awareness of the gulf between what we hope for out of life and what life actually is.

       Yet life as is actually is is the clay we have to work with so long as we have the energy to try to bend existence to our wills.  So, out the door, dressed for the weather,  I go.  No news there.